Ir is generally conceded, that the inhabitants of the New England States, as a body, exhibit some peculiar characteristics, when compared with those who dwell in other sections of our widely extended and diversified Union. And it is known that the varied face of the country, and hence the local facilities for different occupations, together with the history of different settlements, have all tended to produce diversities of character, habits, and employments.

To these considerations must be added the different views and pursuits of the original settlers, the object of settlement being by no means the same in all the Colonies.

Now it is not pretended, that the first Europeans who colonized within the bounds of New Hampshire were, like those at Plymouth, seeking an asylum from persecution for their religion. We know that expeditions for fishing along the coast, and the trade in furs, occupied the attention of the earliest visitors; and that a considerable time elapsed, after the discovery and partial colonizing of the shores, before a regular government could be formed. Whereas, at the settlement of Plymouth, the principles on which the power of rule was to be based, and even those who were to exercise that power, were designated and resolved on before the landing of the company.*

Very different was the condition of those who commenced the efforts which resulted in establishing the State of New Hampshire. Their arrangements, therefore, consisted more in the regulations of a mercantile company, than in a civil legislation, with its provisions for insuring a permanent, dignified administration of well adapted laws, the result of deliberate consideration. By the necessity of the case, however, this became their condition, in process of time.

No proof is found of actual settlement before 1623. The precise date of the settlement, it has been candidly acknowledged, "cannot probably be ascertained."* This acknowledgment, however, relates only to some overt act, connected with settling; since both the year, and season of the year, are ascertainable.

But the settlements were, for many years, greatly troubled by the conflicting claims of patentees. These claims were derived, originally, from the Council of Plymouth, in the mother country. And of them it is remarked by CHALMERS, that, “during the fifteen years of the existence of that company, it adopted the policy of conferring on various men several interfering parcels of New England; which has thrown the greatest obscurity over its earliest history; which long occasioned perplexing embarrassments to the different claimants, to the different colonies, and to England." These transactions have, notwithstanding, been placed in as clear a light as the subject admits, by Dr. BELKNAP, the accomplished historian of New Hampshire, at a cost of much research. And we learn, that Sir FERDINANDO GORGES and Captain JOHN MASON, as joint partners, obtaining a title to a territory they called LACONIA, extending from Merrimac River to Sagadehock, (or the Kennebec,) and far inland, MASON having previously acquired the grant of another, reaching from the River Naumkeag to that of Piscataqua, and back to their sources, employed men to settle the country. Accordingly, successive establishments were made at Little Harbor and Dover, to which, from other causes, were added those of Exeter and Hampton,‡ forming for themselves severally, in a few years, separate jurisdictions.

was,

Without entering into an account of these various governments, which of themselves were only of short duration, it is sufficient for our purpose to state in this place, that, by the year 1642, they were all absorbed in the General Government of Massachusetts. This absorption was not, however, an arbitrary or violent act on the part of that State. In each instance of its occurrence, it from the necessity of the case, solicited by the settlements. Their feeble condition, exposed as they were to the attacks of the savages of the wilderness, who, especially about the year 1637, appear to have plotted the destruction of all European settlers along the coast; the want of some superior authority, to act as an umpire in the disputes and difficulties which arose among themselves; and, added to this, a desire to hold their lands not as tenants, but in simple fee; these were sufficient reasons for wishing to avail

* Farmer and Moore's Coll. Vol. II., p. 32. † Polit. Annals, Vol. I., ch. xvii., p. 472. See these articles in the following Gazetteer.

themselves of the matured authority, experience, and prosperity of Massa

chusetts.

The three governments, therefore, of Dover, Exeter, and Piscataqua, or Portsmouth, after struggling for years with difficulties of a civil and ecclesiastical nature, were united to the settlements in their vicinity to the south; Exeter being first joined, by the authority of the court, to Essex County; and, afterward, with the others, forming, for a time, the county of Norfolk:* their history being blended, for the next forty years, with that of their neighbors. Hampton had, in the mean time, been settled from Massachusetts, and was, therefore, accounted as naturally belonging to that government, although within the present bounds of NEW HAMPSHIRE.†

This latter name was assumed as early as 1629; when, after GORGES and MASON had been for several years united in the possession of a patent from the Plymouth Council, embracing "all the lands between the rivers Merrimac and Sagadehock," before cited, "and extending back to the great lakes and river of Canada,‡ and called Laconia," and under which patent their settlements had been made, as we have seen, MASON obtained for himself a new patent. The extent is thus described: "From the middle of Pascataqua River, and up the same to the furthest head thereof, and from thence north-westward, until sixty miles from the mouth of the harbor were finished; also, through Merrimac River, to the furthest head thereof, and so forward up into the land westward, until sixty miles were finished; and from thence to cross overland to the end of the sixty miles accounted from Pascataqua River; together with all islands within five miles of the coast." The territory included within these limits received the name which the State at present bears.

The same council which issued the patent above cited, had given to GORGES, in 1621, “a grant of all the land from the river of Naumkeag, now Salem, round Cape Anne to the river Merrimac; and up each of those rivers to the furthest head thereof; then to cross over from the head of the one to the head of the other; with all the islands lying within three miles of the coast."§ It had also, after giving several other discordant grants, sold to a company of gentlemen, named by HUTCHINSON,|| "all that part of New England three miles to the south of Charles River, and three miles to the north of Merrimac River, from the Atlantic to the South Sea." The date of the last patent was March 19, 1627.

It could hardly be expected, that grantees of property so indefinite, or, if defined, so inconsistently done, should mutually agree. We are not, therefore,

* Including Salisbury, Haverhill, Hampton, Exeter, Portsmouth, and Dover

† See Belknap's History of N. H., chaps. i. ii. iii. iv.

Wood, in 1634, says: "The place whereon the English have built their Colonies is judged, by those who have the best skill in discovery, either to be an iland, surrounded on the north side with the spacious River Cannada, and on the south with Hudson's River, or else a Peninsula, these two rivers overlapping one another, having their rise from the great lakes, which are not farre off one another, as the Indians doe certainly informe us." Such, at that time, was their geography of the country. "N. E. Prospect," pp. 1, 2. History Massach. Vol. I., p. 16.

Belknap, ut supra.

surprised to find, that the people of Massachusetts regarded GORGES' and MASON'S claims with jealousy, and considered them in a hostile light; nor that the death of MASON, who had been for some time using all his influence to procure a royal order for a general governor to be appointed for all New England, and thus to supersede those of Plymouth and Massachusetts, should 66 mercy." ""* be recorded by Gov. WINTHROP as a The conflicting claims we have alluded to must, almost necessarily, have originated hostile feelings, however we regret and disapprove them.

GORGES, in his "History of New England," declarcs," that he could hardly get any, for money, to reside" in the country he claimed; but the change of times and interests soon made it a place of refuge for persecuted religionists, and the settlements then advanced rapidly, until, attracting the attention of the royal government, "it was especially ordered, by the king's command, that none should be suffered to go without license." Yet, though destitute of royal patronage, the settlements nevertheless "grew," as Colonel BARRE, in the period of the American Revolution, declared of them before the British Parliament, "by the neglect of them," chargeable on their mother country-a neglect which rendered their own most strenuous exertions necessary, and finally successful.

In fact, to this principle we must refer the difference between the success that attended on the settlers of the Bay State and that of the people employed by GORGES and MASON. This is sensibly and strikingly described by the judicious BELKNAP. "The difference between a man's doing business by himself, and by his substitutes," observes the Doctor, "was never more finely exemplified, than in the conduct of the Massachusetts planters, compared with that of Sir Ferdinando Gorges; what the one had been laboring for above twenty years, without any success, was realized by the others in two or three years; in five they were so far advanced as to be able to send out a colony from themselves, to begin another at Connecticut; and, in less than ten, they founded an University, which has ever since produced an uninterrupted succession of serviceable men in church and State.†

The history of NEW HAMPSHIRE may, with convenience, be divided into four distinct periods. The first will be the period we have just been reviewing-that from the earliest settlements by the English to the union with Massachusetts. The time of that union will form another, consisting of nearly forty years. The third embraces the royal government of the Province, and down to the American Revolution, and the fourth what has transpired since.

I. Not much of interest, except that which is purely local, attaches to the history of the inconsiderable communities which were first formed. And yet it is no trifling subject for the contemplation of humanity. Courage and fortitude were needed, to face and endure the distresses of an American wilderness, three thousand miles from home. The names, therefore, of HILTON,

* Winthrop's Journal, I. 187, and Dr. Savage's note there.

† Life of Gorges, in Amer. Biogr. Vol. I., p. 381.